The mysterious relationship between the mind and the body is avidly being researched by today’s cognitive scientists. This programme seeks to understand the mind/matter dichotomy through the eyes of some of history’s keenest philosophers, including Descartes, Wittgenstein, Leibniz, Mill, Gilbert Ryle, Willard Van Orman Quine, Thomas Nagel, and John Searle. Three of today’s leading lights in this intriguing branch of philosophy - Colin McGinn and Brian McLaughlin, both of Rutgers University, and NYU’s Ned Block - share their views as well. Descartes’s Meditations, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, and Quine’s Mind and Verbal Dispositions are consulted.

Chapters include: 1. What is the mind? 2. An introduction to Dualism & Monism 3. Dualism: Parallelism & Epiphenomenalism 4. Dualism: Emergentism 5. Monism: Idealism 6: Monism: Materialism / Physicalism 7. Concluding thoughts.